In case you haven't heard, SBS has a new dating show called Undressed, which sees strangers meet, undress each other, and then engage in all kinds of intimate date activities like holding hands, talking about awkward childhood moments, massage each other and even kiss, all while the cameras roll.
If stripping down 15 seconds after meeting a potential love match sounds like torture to you, you're not alone. But for Lexie, a burlesque performer, that was just "the fun element".
The show posits that the process of attraction - and yes, love - is accelerated by physical and emotional contact, but Lexie believes that she and Nicole "could've done that clothed or undressed and it probably would've been the same".
"We're both performers and used to being half-naked in front of people," she says, but concedes that "maybe for other people on the show the undressing part could've made them feel a lot more exposed and raw".
"I think if we were to get fully naked, then yes, I would've felt very vulnerable, but I'm glad we didn't!" she adds with a laugh.
At the end of the 30 minute date, each participant votes on whether they want to see the other person again. Lexie and Nicole both voted yes, so are they now an item, six months down the line?
"Nicole and I never became an item," Lexie reveals.
But all is not lost.
"We're friends, we're definitely friends," she adds quickly, "But obviously I live in Perth, and she's living in London at the moment, she's performing over there, so we're just friends and we follow each other's performing careers with lots of support and I think she's really a fun, awesome person."
Despite the fact that Lexie and Nicole didn't have a lasting love connection, Lexie tells us that her experience filming the show was "really fun!".
"To be honest I wasn't really looking for 'the one', going on the show," she explains. "I was definitely open to whatever happened, but I didn't go there with the attitude of like 'I'm gonna find someone!' and I think the fact that I just had such a great time with Nicole was just the best thing I could've gotten out of it."
"I felt like she had that attitude, too, which was nice," she adds.
Lexie tells us that she first saw the callout for LGBTQIA+ people on Facebook, and laughs that we "might have just got [her] on the right day" to get her to sign up on a whim.
"I was feeling really outgoing that day!" she says, laughing. "I just thought the concept sounded really cool, and I was like 'you know what? I'm just gonna go with this and see what happens', I honestly didn't expect to get on the show!"
Describing the day of the date as "surreal", Lexie ran us through the lengths the producers went to to make sure that Lexie and Nicole's first meeting was a complete surprise once they were filming.
"I had no idea who I was going to meet, and everybody was like, secretive, and they had code names for us, on the walkie talkies!" she recalls, adding that producers had to make sure the coast was clear if either one of them wanted to go to the bathroom.
"It just felt like I was in some dystopian universe," she jokes.
When Nicole did finally walk around that corner, Lexie says she immediately felt at ease.
"She just was really warm, and fun, and immediately I was like 'okay, this is alright'," she says, noting "it could've been really awkward but it just felt really comfortable just having fun with her, so that was really a relief."
Once they had met and relaxed, Lexie says she even "kind of forgot the cameras were there!"
"It was kind of weird having the things pop up on the screen telling us what to do, but then also, that was kind of good as well because then we didn't have any awkward silences," she recalls.
Lexie and Nicole may not have had any awkward silences, but that certainly wasn't the case for all the couples. You can catch the cringe, the crushes, and everything in between now on , where the first four episodes of Undressed are streaming now.
